I just saw The Troubles in Northern Ireland included here following this edit (restored following reversion here) by User:Gerrynobody. I think it violates WP:NPOV to define this as a "colonial" conflict. Per Gerry's point that it is inconsistent to include other Irish conflicts while excluding the Troubles—true, since the rest of Ireland was also an integral part of the UK from 1801 to 1922, and was an effective client state of GB/England before then—I've removed prior Irish conflicts from the box too. (I've left the Fenian raids in Canada in.) Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  13:32, 11 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Have undone last edit. Please elaborate on why describing the Troubles as a colonial conflict is not WP:NPOV. The fact that the term may be distatsteful to some unionists cannot enter into our judgement surely. I will try to be more constructive than simply stating that it is colonial (and previous conflicts which were also deleted were also), because this rests on more than our own subjective opinion on the matter. A cursory glance at mainstream Irish-British historiography concerning the seventeenth century onwards will show that Ireland is almost universally considered to have been a colony, rather than a 'client state', with a population alien in culture, religion and language from the English. None of this is controversial and the article should reflect widely-accepted research on the subject rather than opinion. Gerrynobody (talk) 17:40, 1 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Go ahead and present some reliable, scholarly sources in which Northern Ireland, 1968–98 is called a colonial conflict. —  Cliftonian (talk)  21:59, 1 March 2016 (UTC)Reply There's only a rhetorical difference between colony and client state, ask the Palestinians. You should offer RS on why it isn't a colonial war, rather than putting the onus elsewhere.Keith-264 (talk) 22:29, 1 March 2016 (UTC)Reply No, Gerry is the one wanting to add this, therefore the WP:BURDEN is on him to verify. —  Cliftonian (talk)  22:38, 1 March 2016 (UTC)Reply Came here via notice at MH talk. The burden is on Gerry to produce the reliable sources that describe it as a colonial conflict. As it stands (without such sources), the contention is OR. Cheers, Peacemaker67 (click to talk to me) 23:01, 1 March 2016 (UTC)Reply Concur. Northern Ireland is (and Ireland was before it) a constituent part of the United Kingdom with full representation in the House of Commons. How can it possibly be regarded as a colony without being POV? -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:16, 2 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Okay, it's been a week and neither Gerry nor anyone else has come forward with sources to back this up. I'm putting it back accordingly. —  Cliftonian (talk)  08:02, 8 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyWP:RS that Northern Ireland, 1968–98 is called a colonial conflict edit

Sorry I am just seeing this now. I seem to only get notifications when the page itself, as opposed to the talk page, is modified. To be honest I am surprised that this is even considered controversial but how and ever, I will cite some sources.

Can I assume there is no argument about Ireland being described as a colony in the early modern period? Especially from the time of the plantations in Munster and Ulster onwards (‘plantation’ was a synonym for ‘colony’ then-the words were used interchangeably to refer to both Ulster, Munster, Virginia, Barbados etc.). These were state-sponsored projects with the explicit objective of replacing much of the indigenous Gaelic population with English and Scots; you can’t get much more ‘colonial’ than that. This has been firmly established in the work of D.B.Quinn and Nicholas Canny (see practically anything they published on the subject), and more recently the foremost academics in the field (Raymond Gillespie, one of whose many books is entitled ‘Colonial Ulster’).

Even the doyen of anti-Republicanism, Roy Foster, writes on the first page of his widely-read ‘Modern Ireland’ survey: ‘the English colonial presence in Ireland remained superimposed upon an ancient identity, alien and bizarre.’ It is true that there has been a debate about the uefulness of comparisons to English colonies in North America, but even the most critical of these comparisons have accepted that ‘colonisation became the preferred option in Ireland’. (Hiram Morgan, ‘Mid-Atlantic Blues’, The Irish Review, No. 11, p.51) Can we agree that this holds for the eighteenth century? Certainly the editors of the Oxford History of the British Empire volume on the eighteenth century deems Ireland worthy of a chapter. This was a society in which a colonial settler class, usually termed the Protestant or Anglo-Irish ascendancy, a minority but legally, militarily and economically privileged, differed in language, religion and social origins to the native population of disenfranchised Catholic Irish, who constituted about 70% of the population in the middle of the century, and who were excluded from any role in administering the country.

Perhaps the best proof that Ireland was regarded as a colony at the time is the indignant protests by this Anglo-Irish class that Ireland was being treated as a colony from London. As many unionists continue to argue, they wanted to be treated as if they lived in any other part of Britain. Works like Molyneux’s ‘The Case of Ireland...Stated’ (1698), however, would not have been necessary if Ireland had not been, in fact, a colony. The widespread use in the scholarship of the term ‘colonial nationalism’ to describe this movement again attests to the fact that Ireland is considered a colony by researchers in the field. See for example the standard work on the period: ‘A New History of Ireland, Volume IV’. So this leaves us with the period after 1801 that the term ‘colony’ is being disputed I guess.

Necrothesp has pointed out that Ireland was a constituent part of the United Kingdom with seats in the British parliament. This is true in a formal, legal sense, although this was only the case from 1801 onwards. Was it a colony before that? Again, formally-speaking, it was a separate kingdom, but it would be seriously misleading to take this legal status on face value, and few historians do so. (I should also add the fact that most Irish weren’t allowed to vote until the mid-19th century, rendering the fact that Ireland had seats in the London parliament somewhat meaningless from their point of view). I am getting to Northern Ireland, but seeing as all the Irish conflicts have been removed from the template list now, I feel I have to make some kind of extended justification to cover their inclusion and therefore the last 500 years of history! So...in the nineteenth-century Ireland, despite its formal incorporation into the UK in 1801, is still widely referred to in academic texts as a colony.

I would be the first to admit that this description is not without its caveats and detractors. David Fitzpatrick (not known for his sympathies towards republican or nationalist interpretations either) writes in the ‘Oxford history of the British empire vol 3’, (p.494): ‘The formal Union of the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain masked a hybrid administration with manifest colonial elements, allowing variant interpretations of the character of Ireland's dependency. Was Ireland an integral part of the United Kingdom, a peripheral, backward sub-region, or a colony in all but name?’ There were, therefore, some anomalous features about Ireland that made it unique among Britain’s colonies. The fact that it is included in Oxford’s standard reference work on the empire, however, suggests to me that there is a considerable body (notwithstanding dissenting voices) of opinion in academia that views Ireland as a colony up to independence, and by extension, the conflict in Northern Ireland as rooted in the tensions inherent in settler colonial situations. Despite formal incorporation into the UK, Ireland’s status as a colony is most often argued in terms of its actual treatment by the ‘mother country’ as oppposed to legal status or avowed intentions.

The retardation of southern Irish industry, the disdain for the native population and the social engineering that exacerbated the famine-these are all things that bespeak a colonial form of rule over a subject people who are widely deemed by the metropole to be inferior. From everything I’ve read on the subject, Michael Hechter’s book, ‘Internal Colonialism’ (1975) describe best the way Ireland was economically ‘condemned to an instrumental role by the metropolis’ which, Hechter argues, is the ‘pattern of development characterising the colonial situation’. (p.30) I can provide a raft of further citations to support this if necessary, but this post is getting long enough already. Terrence McDonough (ed.), ‘Was Ireland a colony?: economics, politics, and culture in nineteenth-century Ireland’ (2005) is an excellent introduction, and includes critique of this colonial analysis as well as support.

Finally, to the part of Ireland that remained a constituent part of the UK after 1922, Northern Ireland. Once again, it has to be stressed that to argue simply from the area’s de jure status that Northern Ireland is not a colony but a constituent part of the UK is insufficient and not reflective of academic discourse on the subject. To take the same logic would be to argue that Algeria was not a colony from 1848 onwards when, technically, the area consisted of three départements, legally-speaking as integral to the French state as Paris was. The same is still true today of French Guiana, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Mayotte and Réunion. Are these places not colonies? As for Northern Ireland, I would again acknowledge a description of the Troubles as a colonial conflict is far from universally-accepted, but it is widespread in the scholarship. David Miller, a professor of sociology at the University of Bath, has written extensively on Northern Ireland and the Troubles, and his work consistently argues for a colonial paradigm in understanding the conflict. A bibliography of his work is here: http://www.dmiller.info/ Pamela Clayton’s essay ‘Religion, Ethnicity and Colonialism as Explanation of Northern Ireland’ in Miller, ‘Rethinking Northern Ireland’ (1993), pp.40-54 is a sustained argument for the colonial context. Lustick, ‘Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria’ (1993), passim, also discusses Northern Ireland (and Ireland as a whole before 1922) as a colonial conflict, as does MacDonald, ‘Children of Wrath: Political Violence in Northern Ireland’, (1986).

In my experience, the argument that Ireland/Northern Ireland was/is not a colony is often based on nothing more than the geographic proximity of the two countries. This once again suggetss comparisons with French Algeria, which the French also displayed a reluctance to refer to as a colony, even in the fifties when they were fighting tooth and nail to hold on to it, see: Lustick, Ibid., p.113. Other books that make the comparison with Algeria are : Hugh Roberts, ‘Northern Ireland and the Algerian Question’ (1986) and Frank Wright, ‘Northern Ireland: A comparative analysis’ (1987). Given that this template is about British colonial campaigns, I think it is most telling that, in the seventies especially, the British army itself approached their operation in Northern Ireland as a colonial insurgency, see: William Beattie Smith, ‘The British State and the Northern Ireland Crisis’, 1969-73, pp.153-4, 197, 307. Smith on p.377 describes direct rule after 1972 as a ‘colonial system’.

Likewise Weitzer, ‘Transforming Settler States: Communal Conflict and Internal Security in Northern Ireland and Zimbabwe’ (1990), who analyses Northern Ireland throughout his work as a colony, states: ‘Direct rule in effect installed a system of colonial rule [which] has no roots in civil society and has precarious authority at best. As in other colonial states, the British administration is superimposed on society and institutionally detached from local social forces.’ (pp.197-8) O'Leary and McGarry, ‘The Politics of Antagonism: Understanding Northern Ireland’ (1993) argue extensively about the colonial nature of the conflict.

McGarry and O’Leary are about as authoritative you can get on the subject of Northern Ireland. In their volume ‘Comparing Northern Ireland’ (1995), p.141, they write: ‘The international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’. I must say this is my impression as well. I have only ever encountered resistance to the idea from British unionists. I have my own ideas about why that is but let’s not get into that. They are of course entitled to their opinion, but that does not mean that this exclusion of Northern Ireland from the ranks of Britain’s colonies should take precedence on wikipedia. One of its principles is that it should reflect a global POV, after all Wikipedia:Systemic_bias. It has been suggested that to regard N.Ireland as a colony is not NPOV; I would suggest that to exclude it is not NPOV, given that NPOV means ‘representing fairly, proportionately, and, as far as possible, without editorial bias, all of the significant views that have been published by reliable sources on a topic’. Wikipedia:Neutral_point_of_view I would argue, therefore, that the Troubles be included in this list of British colonial templates, notwithstanding dissenting views. Certainly to exclude the other Irish conflicts in the list would seem to me to constitute OR. 21:49, 10 March 2016 (UTC) — Preceding unsigned comment added by Gerrynobody (talk • contribs)

Replies edit

Thank you for the extensive engagement with the topic at hand, Gerry. I've taken the liberty of splitting it up into paragraphs as it was rather difficult to read as originally formatted, I hope you don't mind. You mention Fitzpatrick's writing: ‘The formal Union of the kingdoms of Ireland and Great Britain masked a hybrid administration with manifest colonial elements, allowing variant interpretations of the character of Ireland's dependency. Was Ireland an integral part of the United Kingdom, a peripheral, backward sub-region, or a colony in all but name?’; how does he answer this question, or does he just leave it dangling? I also note that while you have presented some sources comparing The Troubles and/of aspects of the government of Northern Ireland to colonial situations elsewhere in the world, none of them seem to me to definitively call The Troubles a British colonial campaign.

I am not totally unreceptive to the idea of describing the conflicts before the Acts of Union 1800 as "colonial" as the Kingdom of Ireland was separate from the Kingdom of Great Britain (and England before that), albeit very closely connected, but from 1801 this is an integral part of the United Kingdom we're talking about—all of Ireland until 1922, and Northern Ireland after that. Sourced commentary on whether this constitutes colonial rule, a colonial system or whatever is of course very welcome on Wikipedia as we try to present all the different facets of the topic, but that belongs in the relevant articles, not here in this definitive list of British colonial campaigns. Putting The Troubles, 1968–98 on here would be very clearly taking the Irish republican side in the conflict and essentially de-legitimising the legal government of Northern Ireland as a tool of colonial oppression. For this to fit Wikipedia's NPOV policy, we would need sources saying that this is the majority viewpoint of the academic community—that is, that Northern Ireland was a British colony during The Troubles, 1968–98, and presumably remains one now. Are there reliable sources attesting to that being the case? Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  08:20, 11 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

To begin with your last question Cliftonian: yes there are reliable sources attesting to this, and I have cited numerous instances already which definitely identify the Troubles and Northern Ireland as a colonial conflict. As regard Fitzpatrick’s chapter relating to Ireland as a colony in the nineteenth century, yes indeed he is fairly unambiguous in describing Ireland as a colony. A failure to recognise this by some academics he attributes to ‘the scholarly practice of allowing formal constitutions rather than practical relationships to circumscribe political analyses’. (p.499) This is pretty much my point about this period-taking the status of Ireland, on paper, as proof that it was not a colony is clearly insufficient. No historian I’ve ever read has deemed it sufficient evidence in and of itself. Fitzpatrick certainly gives numerous reasons to suggest that, in practice, the relationship was colonial in nature. The following are some examples:

‘The Irish administration remained distinctively colonial in both form and function, despite the legislatice union. As in India after 1858, annexation was followed by direct rule under a ‘Lord Lieutenant’ or ‘Viceroy.’ (p.495)

‘No government could bring itself to accept the full implications of the Union.’ (p.496)

‘Irish unrest provoked measures of repression and coercion unthinkable in Britain; Irish poverty justified welfare experiments and state intervention to a degree shocking to orthodox political economists. In these respects, Ireland was not only exceptional within the United Kingdom but akin to a colony, efficiency in government being valued above the liberty of the subject and the sanctity of property.’

Again on p.498 he makes the analogy with India: ‘Ireland’s rulers, whether grim or benevolent, tended to regard the Irish as a separate and subject native population rather than an integral element of a united people.’

p.498: ‘The colonial spirit was evident in what nationalists saw as a substantial 'army of occupation, in which the police performed paramilitary functions while the army offered vigorous 'aid to the civil power' in suppressing riots, affrays, illegal assemblies, and rebellions. In 1880 the irish garrison of over 25,000 soldiers vastly exceeded that in any dependency except India, amounting to twice the size of the police establishment.'

p.499: ‘Salisbury was not alone in likening the Irish to the Hottentots (being likewise incapable of self-government).’

Once again let it be noted Fitzpatrick cannot be dismissed as in any way sympathetic to a Republican interpretation. In fact, he is if anything a revisionist, anti-Nationalist in orientation and disliked by some Republicans for his accusations of sectarianism by the IRA In the war of independence.

As I said, if we were to follow the line of reasoning that Ireland’s status on paper disbars it from being considered a colony, we would have to delete the Algerian War from Template:French_colonial_campaigns. Wouldn't this be unnecessarily restrictive in our definition of what a colony is? Then I don’t see how Northen Ireland is any different. The fact that the government of Northern Ireland is legal...I don’t really see how this has any bearing on the matter, given that all colonial (indeed all oppressive regimes) have been ‘legal’ according to their own laws. Neither do I see that including the Troubles in a list of colonial conflicts necessarily implies adopting a Republican view. However, to merely see it as a matter internal to Britain is to completely ignore the conceptual framework in which one side to the party (i.e. the Irish, not merely Republicans) have generally viewed it: as an international conflict. This is the majority viewpoint of the academic community. again, that doesn’t equate with taking sides in the conflict. To claim, like Thatcher did, that Northern Ireland is ‘as British as Finchly’ is simply mistaken and seems to me wilfully mistaken-nothing more than a policing issue and civil unrest within a country. Indeed, Thatcher herself didn’t really believe this; if had she had, she wouldn’t have signed the Anglo-Irish agreement.

It might be inferred from the label of ‘colony’ that British rule in Northern Ireland is illegitimate and oppressive, but this does not necessarily follow. These are value judgements, whereas the term ‘colony’ has a specific, objective meaning, which I have demonstrated describes Northern Ireland, i.e. a government-sponsored project to settle the area with colonists from outside and displace the indigenous population. Likewise, it does not necessarily imply that the unionists in Northern Ireland are colonisers, just the descendants of colonisers (although in actual fact the realities of interbreeding, religious conversion, and other factors mean that many who identify as British unionists probably have Irish ancestors: Ken Magennis for example). I am not sure how many sources you need me to cite to prove that the Troubles are widely interpreted as a colonial conflict within academia. All of those I presented clearly locate the Troubles within a colonial framework. The McGarry and O’Leary quote (‘The international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’) is sufficient to show that, globally, this is the mainstream view in academic work on the subject. Gerrynobody (talk) 12:19, 12 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Is there an academic source saying: "the mainstream academic view is that Northern Ireland, 1968 to 1998, was a colony", or "the mainstream academic view is that the Troubles were a colonial conflict", or something along those lines? The "international communiry largely accepts" quote seems to refer to foreign governments, not academics. —  Cliftonian (talk)  13:33, 12 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I have clearly demonstrated that seeing the Northern Ireland conflict as a colonial one is a mainstream view in academia, with fairly copious references. I do not need to provide a quotation more or less affirming this verbatim. I do not feel you are engaging constructively in the discussion Cliftonian. You appear to be arbitrarily placing the burden of evidence so heavily on me as to be impossible to meet. You are also setting up the debate as one in which the onus is on me to convince you. This seems odd to me given that wikipedia is meant to be a collaborative effort. The way I think it is meant to work is that I provide argument, supporting citations (which I’ve done) and then you or anyone else who cares to, provides a counter-argument, which you haven’t. Essentially, you are simply stating over and over again that Northern Ireland is not a colony because....it’s not. This isn’t really an argument. You have not responded in substance to any of the points I have made. This might be the right juncture for you to offer some reliable sources-based evidence that Northern Ireland is not a British colony. All the best.Gerrynobody (talk) 22:28, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Incidentally, re: the inclusion of Robert Emmett’s rising, 1848, the Fenian rising of 1867, I'm not sure they would even qualify as campaigns. In reality they were fairly insignificant events, little more than skirmishes and localised unrest really.Gerrynobody (talk) 22:32, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply David Miller, Rethinking Northern Ireland: Culture, Ideology and Colonialism, 2014, p. 3 summarises the academic consensus: "According to the vast bulk of literature on the topic Northern Ireland is not a colony of Britain and the conflict there is not colonial in nature." Seems pretty unequivocal. Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  22:57, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

That is taken somewhat out of context, from a book which argues forcefully for a colonial interpretation of the Northern Ireland Troubles. Given the fairly numerous references I've given to academics who do view it as a colonial conflict, I think it behoves you to provide a more substantial argument than that.Gerrynobody (talk) 23:11, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Gerry, that is Miller's summary of the scholarly consensus on whether Northern Ireland is a colony or not, indeed the very first sentence in his book, and it unequivocally shows that the majority view in scholarly literature is that it is not. Can you find a source that contradicts this summary? —  Cliftonian (talk)  23:27, 14 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I already have provided a quotation showing ‘the international community largely accepts the colonial analogy’, and have already pointed out that I already have. You have not accepted this, as I suspect you will probably find reasons to not accept any quotation I provide. As I have indicated, it is not up to individual editors to unilaterally decide what does and does not constitute the grounds for inclusion in these templates. Simply googling around looking for quotations that say ‘most people do/do not accept Northern Ireland is a colony’ or words to that effect, is not really a decent basis on which to determine the issue.

Truth be told, we are not going to determine it, because it has been, and no doubt will continue to be, a subject of debate among academics for some time to come. My argument is that it should be included in the template because a significant body of scholarly opinion exists that says the Troubles were a colonial conflict. I have argued this and provided extensive quotations to support my contention.

There is more to acadmic debate than digging around on the internet for decontextualised quotations that appear to support the point you are trying to make. I could, after all, present another quote from the same chapter in Miller’s book: ‘Ulster is British in the sense that it is a colonial possession which the British state has tried to present as an integral part of the state’ which, in isolation, appears to support my case. Does this prove anything conclusive on its own? Not really.

In fact, Miller puts that statement in at the start of his book for dramatic effect, to argue that the ‘vast bulk of literature’ is mistaken at the time he was writing (1998). It’s an exaggeration, and clearly an exaggeration, because he goes on to quote many writers who do regard the conflict as colonial. He follows it by arguing that such a failure to acknowledge the colonial nature of the Northern Ireland conflict is ‘at best, curious’, and goes on to argue (fairly convincingly I seem to remember) why it should be regarded as a colonial conflict. Arguing that something is the ‘majority’ view is ill-advised actually. How does someone prove this? By making a survey of everything ever published on a subject, taking a census of opinions and toting up the score? No-one can (or should) do this. Claiming something is the majority view is merely impressionistic and, in practice, unverifiable. Can you prove to me that a view of Northern Ireland as ‘not a colony’ is the majority view? I mean, actually prove it in the sense that you are asking me to prove the opposite? The best you can do in these matters is convey an impression of the academic consensus (or lack thereof) on an issue.

Once again, please try to engage more constructively in the discussion instead of simply placing a disproportionate burden of evidence on others. For example, you might address my point about Algeria? Is it not a colony? If it is, how does it differ from Northern Ireland? If Ireland was once a colony, when did it cease to be? If a significant proportion of Northern Ireland’s population regard the territory as a colony, why is this viewpoint simply to be disregarded? Gerrynobody (talk) 11:38, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply Gerry, there is no point in you and me debating Algeria and gauging the merit of this or that quote from this or that historian to try to make a final definitive decision on whether the Troubles should be called a colonial conflict or not, or on what the majority academic view is. That is WP:ORIGINALRESEARCH and probably WP:SYNTHESIS of sources as well. What we do need to do is look in scholarly sources for discussion of the historiography and, more specifically, what these historians themselves describe the prevailing academic consensus as being, so we can decide what presentation of the various views would best satisfy Wikipedia policy at WP:NPOV (more specifically WP:WEIGHT).

Per WP:WEIGHT we give due weight to the majority and minority viewpoints respectively. I have provided a scholarly citation that says, verbatim, that "According to the vast bulk of literature on the topic Northern Ireland is not a colony of Britain and the conflict there is not colonial in nature"—Miller argues for a colonial analogy in his book, but also states right off the bat at the start that the majority viewpoint is one of a conflict that is not colonial. Therefore on Wikipedia we should also approach the matter from this view—unless this description of the scholarly consensus is countered by a contradictory description in another reliable source.

I have now asked you several times to such a quote from scholarly literature to support your assertion that the majority of academic sources describe Northern Ireland as a colony and the Troubles as a colonial conflict. In response you give a lot of weight to this quote "the international community largely accepts the colonial analogy"—the full quote, here, is "The international community largely accepts the colonial analogy, which helps to explain why nationalists and republicans have received more external support than unionists." As I pointed out before "the international community" in this sentence almost certainly refers to foreign governments, not academics.

Since we don't seem to be making much progress here by ourselves I have made another post at Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history to try to get a third party or two to come into the debate and help us out. Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  12:17, 15 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyGerry's right that the term is used by RS, which makes it Wikivalid and also right that the nominal legal status of Ireland in the modern era contains obfuscation. What else would you call a place where food is being extracted amidst a famine to feed the metropolitan population? That's what colonies are for; it also passes the duck test. Ireland was at least a colony de facto (among other things) until the UK civil war and Nireland still is. Keith-264 (talk) 12:39, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply@Peacemaker67 and Necrothesp: you both commented earlier, what do you think? —  Cliftonian (talk)  14:18, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Cliftonian, I fully agree that there is no point in us trying to definitively determine whether or not colonial is the right way to describe the conflict in Northern Ireland or whether or not this or that description is the majority view. What I am arguing is that there is more than enough weight of opinion in academia that Northern Ireland is a colonial conflict to justify its inclusion in a list of Britain’s colonial campaigns.

I do give a lot of weight to that ‘international community’ quote it is true, more than I would like, mainly because you were asking for a quote that suggested a colonial interpretation was widespread. BTW I would not accept the interpretation that it refers merely to foreign governments; my reading is more general, including foreign governments, but also public opinion, academia etc. I certainly wouldn’t argue that this quote decisively settles the issue, just as I don’t accept the Miller one does, which you give a lot of weight to. In fact, neither of these quotes on their own are sufficient. What I would disagree with is the claim that the issue can be settled by finding a single quote that states what the majority opinion is. As Keith-264 has indicated, there are other criteria that should be examined. I have indicated some of these in my posts above. I also agree with you that some kind of third-party involvement would indeed be helpful. Gerrynobody (talk) 14:39, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I will continue to maintain that it can be nothing other than POV to regard a country with full parliamentary representation and whose inhabitants hold full citizenship rights as a colony. As far as I can see that explicitly contradicts the whole definition of a colony. Before the Act of Union, maybe (although even that is tenuous given Ireland had a parliament and a king). Afterwards, definitely not. To regard Ireland or Northern Ireland as a colony is clearly expressing a pro-republican/anti-unionist POV and can be nothing else, since it effectively denies the legitimacy of Ireland/Northern Ireland's status as an integral part of the United Kingdom. -- Necrothesp (talk) 15:39, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply When did Ireland get universal adult suffrage? The question should be settled by RS not our opinions, even if they're as stylish as mine. Oh and Nirish citizenship rights were withdrawn de jure by the PTA Keith-264 (talk) 23:14, 15 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I suppose the above quotation from Miller about the "vast bulk" of scholarly work on the topic saying "Northern Ireland is not a colony of Britain and the conflict there is not colonial in nature" means nothing then, Keith? As you rightly say RS is what matters here. Can you provide an RS summary of the academic consensus that contradicts Miller's? —  Cliftonian (talk)  04:23, 16 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Great Britain didn't have universal adult suffrage in or before 1922 either. Few countries did. So it's not really relevant whether Ireland did or not. It did, however, have the same suffrage rights as the rest of the UK did (i.e. all men over 21 and women over 30). And Northern Ireland does have universal adult suffrage and has had for as long as the rest of the UK has. Again, arguing anything else can be nothing other than POV. -- Necrothesp (talk) 14:48, 16 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Might I suggest a couple of things that I hope will be uncontroversial:

Anyone on either side of this debate can always find sources that affirm or deny that Northern Ireland is a colony. This is not going to determine anything. Secondly, we are not going to determine anything definitively. Thirdly, inclusion or exclusion can be viewed as potentially lending weight to Republican or Unionist positions respectively, but not necessarily. This fact, in and of itself, does not invalidate either of them. Necrothesp has made some accusations of pro-republican/anti-unionist bias in inclusion, and that this position is not POV. I mightas easily argue that the claim that Northern Ireland is a constituent part of the UK is pro-unionist/anti-republican. This doesn’t get us very far really and serves no purpose other than to create acrimony. While I grant either position could be motivated by unionist or republican bias, this need not necessarily be the case. For the sake of constructive argument, therefore, I suggest we assume good faith. [Wikipedia:Assume_good_faith]

I would agree with Necrothesp that the issue of suffrage etc. is really not very relevant to the issue. Having said that, to claim that Ireland was treated as an equal because suffrage was the same on paper all over the UK and Ireland is wrong. As I said in an earlier post, before the act of union, Ireland’s parliament was only a parliament for the Protestant minority in the country. It was actually the epitome of a colonial assembly, as colonies in America had their own elected assemblies (for the colonists of course, not the slaves or native Americans). Prior to 1829, Catholics were disenfranchised in Ireland where they were the overwhelming majority of the population. Given the far higher proportion of Catholics there, their disenfranchisement was of far greater consequence than England, Scotland or Wales. Even then, property restrictions ensured a far greater democratic defecit in Ireland than other areas. After the 1884 act, which lowered the property limit again, because incomes were low in Ireland, only about 30% of the adult male population had the vote, compared to 60% in England. Even up until the eve of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, various anomalies in the electoral system were used by the unionists to disenfranchise Catholics. Voting restrictions are of course only one part of the story, if you ask me the economically subservient relationship of Ireland to Britain is of far greater importance. Could the potato famine have happened in England? If you are claiming that Ireland was treated the same as England, you are simply in denial of the scholarly consensus on this issue. You do not need to be a raving republican to point out the obvious fact that Ireland not treated as an equal. I direct you to practically any mainstream history book on Ireland in the 19th century. To claim that Northern Ireland (or earlier Ireland) is/was a part of the UK in an unproblematic way is simply wilfully ignoring the troubled history between the two nations since the sixteenth century and, arguably, earlier. It is about as neutral as someone claiming that Northern Ireland is unproblematically Irish, with no recognition of the position of British unionists there. What NPOV would look like is a recognition of both claims, which are essentially irreconcilable. Throwing around vague accusations of not being POV is just sloppy, especially when you do not substantiate them.

But I (well, we) digress.

What we must determine is whether or not Northern Ireland (and earlier Irish conflicts) belong in a list of British colonial campaigns.

While obviously the economic, political and social relations between the two countries are of some relevance, we should be wary of simply interpreting the term ‘colony’ as a value judgement implying bad treatment of one territory by another. The word tends to be used in a rather careless way sometimes. In fact, plenty of places in plenty of times have been abused and treated poorly by other countries, but it doesn’t mean they were colonies. Necrothesp, I note, argues that ‘full parliamentary representation and .. full citizenship rights .. explicitly contradicts the whole definition of a colony’. This is news to me. I am not sure what definition of a colony are you working from. I might point out once againt that the term colony has a technical definition, which the Oxford dictionary gives as: ‘A settlement in a new country; a body of people who settle in a new locality, forming a community subject to or connected with their parent state; the community so formed, consisting of the original settlers and their descendants and successors, as long as the connection with the parent state is kept up.’

Once again, I would argue, Northern Ireland clearly meets this definition, but unless there is some more input into the discussion, we will probably need to resort to some kind of dispute resolution process. Which is preferable to you guys?

Are there any objections to adding conflicts up to the act of union back on the template list at least, until we resolve the issue of later conflicts? Gerrynobody (talk) 09:03, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply Let's go to WP:dispute resolution. I'm on my phone right now, I'll set it up later when I'm at the computer. I suggest leaving the template as is for the moment pending the outcome. Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  12:09, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply I will make a listing at Wikipedia:Third opinion later on, or if someone else would like to do it in the meantime go ahead. Cheers, —  Cliftonian (talk)  12:13, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Just to point out this template was set up as colonial only therefore Ireland wouldn't fit in the agenda. If we were to include troubles then the addition of other Irish conflicts would have to be added & that would go back as far as the the invasion of Ireland under Henry I and then include the Tudor conquest as well as rebellions and so on. So Ireland should be left out completely. Then the argument could be taken to include the English conquest of France in 100 Years War. Shire Lord (talk) 12:51, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

That is not necessarily true ShireLord, at least it is what we are trying to determine here. Certainly for the period I specialise in (16th & 17th century) the mainstream view is Ireland was a colony. What seems to be at issue here is mostly whether Ireland remained a colony after formal integration into the UK after 1801. I would have no problem describing the Anglo-Norman presence from the 12th century as colonial. It is routinely described as such. Your comparison to English conquests in late medieval France is, however, a good illustration of the difference between a military conquest and occupation, and a colony. The following puts it pretty well, from the New history of Ireland vol.2-this is the standard survey of Irish history: 'Medieval Ireland fulfils the strictest criteria semantics can impose on the word 'colony' as Gascony, to take a further example, which did not receive substantial emigration from England or know dispossession of its native ruling class, does not.' (J. A. Watt, New History of Ireland vol.2, p.313) To simply war in and conquer a country does not necessarily involve colonisation. In Ireland, however, especially from the later 16th/early 17th century onwards, a series of state-sponsored colonies were established in various parts of the country that introduced a settler class, different in religion and language to the native population, who were dispossessed and partially-expelled from the colonised areas. None of this is controversial and is standard in published accounts of the period. To try and problematise it, you really need some kind of countering argument instead of simply stating "of course Ireland wasn't a colony" or words to that effect. That isn't actually an argument. Gerrynobody (talk) 15:23, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Perhaps I wasn't being clear enough what I meant was overseas or in other words colonies that are not within the British isles. Besides Ireland fall into the category of early style colonisation for example Pale of Ireland, Pale of Calais or Plantation of Ireland. Shire Lord (talk) 23:00, 20 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I don't know Shirelord, last time I checked there was a sea between Ireland and Britain. The argument against Ireland as a colony because of proximity is not really one that holds water. There are other fairly uncontested examples of colonisation by cultures of relatively nearby areas, I have given the example of Algeria by France above, which is also just across a sea, the Swedish in Lapland, are just two examples. I am not sure what the 'early-style' colonisation is you refer to is, and how it differs from later projects in any fundamental way. In any case, it is not so much our own opinions that matter here, but the fact that Ireland is unproblematically described as a colony in the early-modern period at the very least, and often later, in mainstream academic discourse. Gerrynobody (talk) 23:03, 23 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

The Irish sea dose not make the proximity of Ireland which is close to England classed as overseas. Also if one wishes to put articles regarding Irish 'colonisation' the complication of the fact that Ireland was a Kingdom in 1542 and from then on becomes part of the United Kingdom in 1801 becomes an issue. You compare Algeria? Algeria wasn't a Kingdom and was a territory of the Ottoman empire unlike that of Ireland. So it is best to leave it out until a third Opinion brings the matter to a close. However it would be interesting to see the article with all the Irish campaigns and troubles put in so perhaps a template on this talk page may help.. Shire Lord (talk) 15:22, 24 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

I have already elaborated on this above, but the formal status of Ireland as a kingdom from 1542 on, and then as a part of the UK from 1801, is not generally recognised in the scholarship as sufficient argument in and of itself against the status of Ireland as a colony. We are talking practice here, as well as formal legal status. In practice, Ireland was a colony, certainly up to the 19th century. See the posts above for more info on this. The comparison of Algeria I meant under French rule from 1830, not under the Ottomans. Algeria, like Ireland, was right across the sea, was legally an integral part of France (as much as Corsica), had its own settler population. In all these respects it bears similarities to Ireland, yet who would deny it was a colony? Gerrynobody (talk) 09:36, 25 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

If it's already a Kingdom then it's not a colony. In the template then why not add Norman invasions & the Tudor conquest? Then there is no need to add anymore after that. Shire Lord (talk) 11:49, 26 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

As I said, the legal status of kingdom does not preclude being a colony. Colonies were founded in Ulster and Munster for example, at the time Ireland was formally a kingdom. This is standard nomenclature in the scholarship. I cannot think of a single historian who disputes they were colonies. The Nine Years War might certainly be included here in that it paved the way for colonisation. I am less sure about the Norman invasion. Colonisation by definition implies some kind of conscious plan on the part of a body such as a state to introduce colonists. The Norman settlements in Ireland often took place against the will of the English king, although this might be debated. In any case the template only goes back as far as the 17th century. I personally wouldn't push for inclusion of earlier conflicts, but if you wish to make the case ShireLord you're free to do so. Gerrynobody (talk) 19:27, 26 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

So we shouldn't include the earlier conflicts but we when should we start with? The Tudor conquest and where does it end? The Nine years war I agree should be included then plus all the subsequent rebellions/insurrections up till the the war of independence? After all Northern Ireland is then classed as an integral part of the United Kingdom so any conflict after that would be laughable. Shire Lord (talk) 21:38, 26 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyThird opinion edit

I have set up this sub-section Wikipedia:Third_opinion#Instructions. —  Cliftonian (talk)  13:06, 19 March 2016 (UTC)Reply Thank you for your 3O request. Since several editors have been involved a 3rd party can not provide resolution in this way. I might add informally that a contentious edit does require a reliable source, but you will have to decide upon another means of reconciliation, such as a request for comments. Redheylin (talk) 20:42, 20 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyRequest for comment edit

There is no consensus for or against the inclusion of the Troubles or other conflicts in Ireland in the template. As the current status quo involves excluding them, that should remain unless consensus is gained to add them. I examined the reliable sources cited in the sections above to determine whether they sway the discussion in one direction, but this is a very grey area. Some sources do compare Ireland's treatment to colonial practices, but that isn't quite the same as calling Ireland a colony. (non-admin closure) ~ Rob^Talk 22:46, 15 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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1. Should the Troubles in Northern Ireland, 1968–98, be included here as a British colonial conflict?
2. Should other conflicts involving England/Britain/the UK on the island of Ireland be included here, and if so which ones? —  Cliftonian (talk)  20:25, 22 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyNo. Albeit a weak negative. Seeing Ireland as a British colony is a leap for me. Would Corporal Jones declare of the Irish, ""They don't like it up 'em!"? I guess it hinges on whether one sees Ireland as part of the British homeland or a foreign part of the Empire. To my way of thinking, it is a little too close to home to be colonial. --Pete (talk) 11:11, 27 March 2016 (UTC)Reply
• Yes It does sound strange, but the Plantations were certainly colonial actions and the Troubles are directly descended from this. The Algerian War is listed as a French colonial campaign and Algeria is also very close to France geographically and was treated as a part of France with it's people having some sort of representation in French parliamentary affairs (^[1]). As regards use of the word colonist, Ethnic Russians who were moved to the Caucasus at various times throughout the last centuries as part of pacification campaigns have always been referred to as colonists, even up until the most recent wave in the 1950s (see The Lone Wolf and the Bear by Moshe Gammer) despite being part of one continuous region and state Warnie685 (talk) 23:30, 28 March 2016 (UTC)ReplyNo - 1968 seems not a Colony nor the colonial period so this is improper to term that way. Other cases should be determined individually. Markbassett (talk) 19:00, 2 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
  • Note The Portuguese Colonial Wars only ended in 1974 Warnie685 (talk) 22:28, 5 April 2016 (UTC)Reply Question: are there reliable sources describing them as a colonial conflict? Borsoka (talk) 04:28, 3 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
    • Please see the extensive discussion above. —  Cliftonian (talk)  06:01, 3 April 2016 (UTC)ReplyYes : Despite the dressing up, the North still has the same settler-colonial dynamics of conflict it had 300 years ago. Everybody implicitly accepts this, but for political reasons some will not explicitly admit it. It's as if the conflict magically stopped being a colonial one because of a law passed in 1800, even though the same conflict kept, and keeps, reproducing itself. The British political scientist David Miller covers the literature quite well in his book Rethinking Northern Ireland (https://books.google.ie/books?id=qFCgBAAAQBAJ&pg=PA6&lpg=PA6&dq=%22northern+ireland%22+colony+quotes&source=bl&ots=ae533yrU2q&sig=Y-ZQ66O8-oXbWGNBK-x_LVWW7Yk&hl=ga&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwih4L2DxILMAhUHpA4KHa_tBAIQ6AEIRDAH#v=onepage&q=%22northern%20ireland%22%20colony%20quotes&f=false) and he also details the extensive collusion between British state and settler/loyalist paramilitaries, another classical feature of settler-colonial conflicts. Michael MacDonald (a US political scientist) wrote a comparative study of the conflict in 1987 called Children of Wrath where he fits the current conflict into a classically defined settler-colonial conflict (https://www.google.ie/webhp?sourceid=chrome-instant&ion=1&espv=2&ie=UTF-8#tbm=bks&q=michael+macdonald+children+of+wrath). Ian Lustick (US political scientist) did a comparative study between the policies of France, Britain and Israel in Algeria, Ireland and Palestine (Unsettled States, Disputed Lands: Britain and Ireland, France and Algeria: https://books.google.ie/books?id=aOfug4jjt-sC&pg=PA532&lpg=PA532&dq=divided+lands+dispute+states+lustick&source=bl&ots=vNdCREg6GQ&sig=E5TBlRZYzVB9MGEUxfnbt4B5h8k&hl=ga&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjR4c2mxoLMAhVG1RoKHcRfDHQQ6AEIGDAA#v=snippet&q=colonial%20ireland&f=false) respectively coming to the same conclusions regarding the settler-colonial similarities between all three (particularly in the French relationship to Algeria) Indeed, people who dispute that it is a settler-colonial conflict can be guaranteed to not actually know the features of an academically-defined settler-colonial conflict. PS: It's ridiculous that Wikipedia will not allow me to shorten the above links by posting them via the tinyurl website. 37.228.205.224 (talk) 22:08, 9 April 2016 (UTC)Reply
    • Yes. There's sourcing for it, and it was part-and-parcel of the same modus operandi. What we need to do, however, is distinguish between a) what led up to the Troubles, and the early part of the Troubles, during British Colonial times, from b) post post-colonial, late Troubles, which are part of the aftermath of dealing with colonialism, but not an example of it. Northern Ireland is not a colony in the Colonial Era sense, it's a geopolitical territory where, today, the majority of the inhabitants (even it not an overwhelming majority of them) are happily citizens of the formerly colonial power, not of the country to the south that is claiming that the land was stolen from it by colonial aggression; nor are they Ulster nationalists trying to restore a separate sovereign state. I agree with comments above that the Plantation (and the Highland Clearances that supplied it) was a colonialist policy, similar in key ways to the English colonization of Australia. It had far-reaching implications for England, Scotland, Northern Ireland, the UK as a unit, Ireland, and even the United States and Canada. It also generated a Scots-Irish mixed ethnicity. This in turn affected native language, development of acquired and now-native English in the region, as well as its music and other culture, plus all the more obvious socio-political effects. Anyway, the late Troubles, like Bloody Sunday, are not colonialism but civil war and pacification, as to their motivation. Great Britain, from the mid-20th century onward, was not trying to hold onto a colony of cheap labor to exploit and resources to seize, but from its point of view defending an integral territory of its citizens from external aggression and internal terrorism in support of a foreign power (regardless what anyone thinks of the legitimacy of the UK claims to NIr, and exactly what the stats are on what the people living there really want).  — SMcCandlish ☺ ☏ ¢ ≽^ʌⱷ҅_ᴥⱷ^ʌ≼  08:43, 10 April 2016 (UTC)ReplySeems bizarre reasoning for a "yes" opinion", given that most of the points you made support "no". There is no qualification possible in a raw list - it is either on the list or not on the list, there is no shade of opinion on it, no "What most sources say are not Colonial conflicts but what some sources say are" category, so how can the distinguishing you desire be expressed? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 16:12, 16 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

• Yes, qualified. I think Gerrynobody makes a good case. I suggest including the Troubles but starting out with something like:

"Although Northern Ireland has a majority Protestant population supporting Union with Britain and has been represented in Parliament of the United Kingdom since ____ , "the Troubles", (or conflict over British rule there from 1968–98), is often called a colonial conflict because the Protestant presence in Ulster started with the Plantations of ____ established settlements of Protestant Scots and Britons starting in ____ ."

Hope that helps. (editor is a randomly chosen volunteer with the "feedback request service" ) --BoogaLouie (talk) 13:36, 14 April 2016 (UTC)ReplyNo, but cross reference Northern Ireland is not a colony, but anyone interested in this list may well also want to know about the British wars in Ireland. Septentrionalis PMAnderson 23:37, 15 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

No and Obviously No. Northern Ireland is not, was not, and never was a colony. This proposal is an abuse of template function for political ideology and if accepted it risks being a foot-in-the-door to permit contentious pov content addition here and endless further arguments both here and maybe elsewhere if this example were to be used as a like-for-like argument on unrelated articles. For example, Mexican–American War is far more of a colonial war than any modern-era British campaign related to Ireland). In fact, there is an argument that the wording of this template is pov compared to other templates. Why, for USA, do we have the neutrally worded "Armed conflicts involving the United States Armed Forces" template, but for Britain it is "British colonial campaigns", with the implied negativity of the term "colonial", rather than "Armed conflicts involving the armed forces of the United Kingdom or its predecessor states"? This questionable wording will become even more questionable, perhaps unsustainable, if the template's usage is expanded to include this article. Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 15:56, 16 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

There seems to be a misunderstanding here regarding the term 'colony'. You are interpreting it as a value judgement. It has, in fact, a specific historical meaning which has nothing to do with passing positive or negative judgement. I have given the definition from the Oxford dictionary in the discussion above. As has also been demonstrated above, Ireland and particularly Ulster fits this definition to a tee, given it was settled by colonists in the early seventeenth-century, an interpretation and terminology that is standard in the scholarship on the subject. Claiming that there is some kind of political agenda behind the inclusion of Northern Ireland essentially amounts to poisoning the well without offering any substantial argument against the proposition yourself. The reason you have a template for British colonial campaigns is that Britain has had colonies (many of them), whereas the United States has generally not practised direct colonisation, but exerted its influence through informal empire. You will find that Britain is not being singled out for special treatment here, as wikipedia is replete with references to French, Spanish, Portugeuse, Dutch etc. imperialism. Gerrynobody (talk) 13:11, 20 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

It is you who are turning it into a value judgment. Yes, colony has a precise meaning, and under no stretch or twisting of the facts can Northern Ireland be called a "colony". Only someone with an extreme pov outlook (or value judgment as you call it) could seriously call Northern Ireland a "colony" - and if you are doing it, then the same value judgments can just as easily be used to justify America's wars in the Philippines or Mexico or Hawaii being called colonial wars. And as for colonists, where do you think all the Americans currently living in Texas, in New Mexico, and in California came from? Your bringing up of 17th century settlements in an issue about what to call a late 20th century conflict is ludicrous: are you going to call the USA in its current form a colony since it too was founded on 17th century settlements? Tiptoethrutheminefield (talk) 14:37, 27 April 2016 (UTC)Reply

Tiptoethrutheminefield, this is not about what you or me personally think. Wikipedia should reflect academic opinion on a subject. If you wish to use 'colony' or 'colonial' as a value-judgement that is your business. I do not. Europeans in North America are indeed descended from colonists. For one reason or another, scholarship generally refers to them as colonists up until American independence. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say they came to be referred to as 'Americans' because the indigenous population was to a great extent wiped out. This was not the case in Ireland, where two self-consciously different nationalities continued to live side by side into the present day. I am curious: presumably you would accept that Ulster was a colony in the 17th century; when did it cease to by a colony in your opinion? Gerrynobody (talk) 21:07, 29 April 2016 (UTC)ReplySince there has been no activity here for about two weeks I have requested an uninvolved administrator to close this RfC here—hope this is okay with everyone. Cheers —  Cliftonian (talk)  07:44, 12 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

Yes, that didn't get us very far, as far as I can make out, it was 4 for 4 against. Not an entirely satisfactory way to proceed in any case I think. What do you suggest next, mediation of some kind? Gerrynobody (talk) 19:00, 12 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

This is mediation. The above is not a straw poll. The request I've put in is for an uninvolved administrator to come in and close the discussion, concurrently passing some form of mediatory judgement. —  Cliftonian (talk)  20:18, 12 May 2016 (UTC)Reply

1. ^ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_legislative_election,_June_1946

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.